Abstract

This paper examines the emergence of â€œdesign thinkingâ€ as a form of technical expertise. It demonstrates that â€œdesign thinkingâ€ articulates a racialized understanding of labor, judgment, and the subject and attempts to maintain whiteness at the apex of global hierarchies of labor.

â€œDesign thinkingâ€ is a form of expertise that poses design not as form giving, but as a form of empathic reason by which executives can plan products, services, and accumulation. Silicon Valley, business schools, and reformers promote it as a form of caring technical expertise by which some guide futures for others. The paper will examine the history of the concept of â€œdesign thinkingâ€ â€“ a category forged by Silicon Valley designers in the face of mounting competitive pressures on design professions in the United States in the mid-2000s. By drawing on artifacts, documents, public debates about the design profession from this period, I will demonstrate how champions of â€œdesign thinkingâ€ responded to expanded availability of design labor globally by figuring Asians and machines as the creative subject's Other.

Bates, David, and Jessica Riskin. â€œCreating Insight: Gestalt Theory and the Early Computer.â€ In Genesis Redux: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Life. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2007.

Boltanski, L. and Chiapello, E., 2005. The new spirit of capitalism. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 18(3-4), pp.161-188.